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By Richard C. Hoagland
As noted in Part I -- as a direct result of the recent "ultra-close-approaches" of the European Space Agency (ESA) Mars Express spacecraft to "Phobos" -- the tiny, inner Moon of Mars -- a variety of scientific experiments aboard that spacecraft have now converged, after analysis of their results by the Enterprise Mission ... on an artificial "moon" hypothesis for "the origins of Phobos"-- As a ~15-mile-long, extremely old and battered ... ancient spaceship. Imminent, official confirmation of this data -- which we at Enterprise have held (and published on ...) for over twenty years -- will change EVERYTHING. Here (below) is an Enterprise Mission "noise-reduction" enhancement of the original Mars Express Phobos imaging data ... from this latest series of "close passes"--
A wide shot (above) ... and then a closer view (below) at greater scale.
This IS a "ship" .... We're looking down ... at about a 30-degree angle ... at the HUGE, almost vertical "side(s) of ... a 15-mile-long space ship!"-- Whose battered, ancient surface can be seen to be composed (even in this relatively "noisy" image) of sculpted ... geometric ... multiply redundant (and meaningfully organized ...) DETAIL -- endless square miles of sheer, GEOMETRIC detail ... present all across this latest, stunning close-up Mars Express photograph of Phobos.
Detail composed over and over again of obvious "right-angle layerings" of the remaining "deck plating"(!); innumerable, geometric 3-D structures and "openings" (NOT "craters" ...) into the interior of this astonishing "moon"; and, the obvious plan still exhibited by the almost endless examples of surviving surface engineering ... revealing a staggering, three-dimensional architecture-- All, compellingly, shouting now ... ARTIFICIALITY! The final, visual proof of this ... is to simply continue "falling-in ... toward Phobos ..." -- toward more and more of that exquisite, geometric structural detail, arranged in obviously "descending fractal patterns" ... across the entire battered, "western hemispheric surface" of this tiny "world" ... the side "facing front." Until ... one can discern unmistakablely individual structures ... singly, and grouped together ... into even smaller "organized sub-formations" ... (below). Like -- gaping, square-like "darkened loading docks" (image -- bottom right) ... or, "row after row of heavily-eroded (and thus now partially revealed ...) exposed interior, parallel "partitions" and "walls" ... if not entire rooms (image - bottom left)"-- Obviously extending deep inside Phobos ... from this shattered, former hull ....
Compelling and convincing evidence that ... indeed ... this moon CANNOT BE just another "natural astronomical object!" But is, in fact-- A SHIP! One that appears to have (literally?)-- "... been through the wars"-- With countless ... "gaping holes," peculiar sinuous "surface scars," and all-too-regular, vast "geometric openings" ... still visible across her multi-layered "hull"; dark ... mysterious openings ... INTO an extraordinary "whole new world" that -- metaphorically and physically -- waits inside--
Waiting ... for the imminent arrival-- Of the uniquely-timed ... first "robotic emissary" to this new Phobos from Earth. The long-planned Russian probe named "Phobos-Grunt" .... In 2012 (below).
* * *
As noted earlier, the Phobos images used in this Report have been processed specifically by the Enterprise Mission for presentation here -- based on original data from the official ESA Phobos March, 2010 image releases. In processing these ESA images, Enterprise employed standard "noise-removal computer algorithms" to eliminate (or, at least reduce) deliberately-injected electronic masking (by ESA), of what "is really down on Phobos" .... Once removed from the original ESA image (below - left) , the stunningly geometric structural detail present on the "real" Phobos immediately comes through (Enterprise "noise-reduced enhancement" below- right) ....
And, we can finally got to see a clearly, unmistakably "artificial Phobos." Confirmed by a final-enhancement and enlargement -- producing a "super noise-reduced, ultra-close-up" view (below) ....
You can almost "count the rivits": Phobos -- from this wonderous visual evidence alone -- IS unquestionably "an ancient, artificial moon ...." This Enterprise "noise-reduction processing," having worked SO well with the most recent releases, we then decided to try it on several earlier ESA Mars Express Phobos images ... which had not gotten a lot of press when they were initially taken, over the past couple of years-- With equally shocking results. Images which had been previously "featureless" (or totally "washed out" in these earlier official image releases ...), when subjected to the current Enterprise computer-processing "noise-reduction imaging techniques ... suddenly, revealed equally stunning, three-dimensional geometric details from their differing perspectives on Phobos (below)--
And ... in exactly the same locations on the surface of Phobos as on the (later) much higher-resolution new imagery.
Talk about "independent confirmation!" The extant of ESA's now-obvious "long-range plan" -- to have carefully "planted" earlier close-up Phobos imagery (from the last really close passes, in 2008) in the public ESA archives-- Where, they could now be readily called up -- and compared, pixel for pixel ... with the much-ballyhooed results of the current "even closer" fly-by data-- Was brilliant-- IF ... your ultimate intent was, indeed-- "Disclosure!" Which is what we seemed to be seeing ... unfolding with marked rapidity ... right before our eyes -- in the form of ESA's suddenly much-hyped "new Phobos fly-by" spin for February/March, 2010.... The deep extant of this "ESA Disclosure forethought" extended (we soon discovered ...) even to the official, published maps of Phobos -- prepared over the years since 2003, from the scientifically-scaled, earlier Mars Express Phobos imagery. Here (below) is what simply "increasing the contrast" on one of the published Phobos image mosaics looks like ... from the official ESA "Phobos Photo-Mosaic Map."
The intensely geometric pattern, offically-published (above & bottom - left) -- showing clearly-defined artificial geometry and organized structure on Phobos' surface, in this official ESA Phobos Map ... is IDENTICAL with the same "Phobos geometric patterns" we (obviously) rediscovered (bottom - right) -- via our independent Enterprise Mission computer enhancements of earlier Mars Express Phobos images--
Which -- since the two landscapes are IDENTICAL -- proves not only that "we" KNOW ... but that "they" KNOW too .... And-- Have carefully "planted" (!) all these key pieces of this patiently-accumulated, scientific evidence, obviously gathered across years ... throughout the ESA Mars Express official archived database system -- thus pre-positioning published (and redundant), multi-disciplinary scientific PROOF that "there used to be intelligent life on Mars ...." Beginning with "an artificial Phobos." This long-term, unfolding new political strategy -- leading ultimately to "Disclosure" (when this is all revealed ...) -- is now blatantly OBVIOUS. And ... "the clock is running out." The proof of this hypothesis -- re the "long-term intentions" of ESA -- lies with this (remember) "officially published Phobos Photo Map"; in this model, the pre-fly-by "hype" around THIS recent close Phobos opportunity was/is a set-up -- designed to trigger ultimately an "official, inside ESA review of ALL the previous Mars Express Phobos data archives ... beginning with THIS crucial Phobos 'stunning surface geometry' map!"-- Whereby -- ESA will suddenly discover its own, previously-published "paper trail" ... ultimately proving to the wider community scientifically (precisely as we have ...) that Phobos is, indeed ... "an artificial spaceship!" And thus ... represents "the only hope for 'the greatest possible leap forward in scientific knowledge and economic development ... for ALL Humankind ... in the shortest possible historical time-frame"-- Before "2012" ....
* * *
This idea -- that Phobos could be an "intelligently-created, giant spacecraft ... a space station ... orbiting Mars" -- is not new; after Hall's initial discovery of "Phobos" (fear) and Deimos (terror) at the US Naval Observatory, in 1877, the earliest, scientific proposal of this idea -- that Phobos itself was "an actual 'space station' ... now slowly spiraling into Mars because it was actually a manufactured, hollow object ... and thereby, subject to even the slight atmospheric drag thousands of miles above Mars ..." -- was first published in 1958. Its author was the well-known Russian astrophysicist, and acclaimed member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, Iosif Samuilovich Shklovsky. Shklovsky further suggested, based on the lack of any previously published telescopic detection of any moons around Mars (despite a telescopic technology more than adequate), prior to Hall's totally unexpected discovery in 1877, that Phobos and Deimos might have been launched "recently" (by Lowell's "Martians ..?") -- thus explaining their "sudden" appearance in the Martian skies ... sometime between the 1875 and 1877 Mars "oppositions." In 1966, my late colleague and friend, Carl Sagan -- acting as Shlovsky's "US translator and editor" -- published an "expanded" Western Edition of Shklovsky's work ... titled in English "Intelligent Life in the Universe."
We now know that, contrary to Shklovsky and Sagan's initial attempted atmospheric-drag calculations re "the origins of Phobos," the Mars' atmosphere is currently far too thin (certainly at Phobos' high orbital altitude -- ~3700 miles) to create any perceptable drag, and thus major alteration of Phobos orbit. Certainly, for any state-of-the-art photographic timing observations conducted by 19th century astronomers (like Douglass, at the Lowell Observatory ...) -- using even the best Earthbound telescopes and photographic technology of the time -- measuring such infinitesimal orbit changes was all but impossible ..... Ultimately, a smaller "secular acceleration" in Phobos' orbit around Mars was confirmed by US, Russian and European spaceraft currently orbiting Mars -- including, Mars Express; and, Phobos' measured acceleration is resulting in a definite "decaying spiral" ... calculated to bring about a catastrophic end for Phobos (and a lot of Mars with it - see below ...) in an almost unimaginable MAJOR impact-- In "only" ... eleven million years.
What are the odds ...? But, if "Martian atmospheric drag" cannot be responsible for Phobos' (now) measureably decaying orbit ... what is? Answer: Those sneaky Martian tides .... As noted earlier, it is those inevitably rising and falling gravitational tides -- differentially attracting the "flexing" artificial superstructure that is Phobos, as it spirals VERY slowly toward the planet -- which are visibly, literally now ... ripping Phobos apart .... A major manifestation of the real -- INTERNAL -- cause for these "mysterious moon-spanning linements" ....
Those same tides which -- by slowly "shredding" Phobos (above) -- are also causing it to, indeed, lose a tiny bit of orbital momentum on each revolution around Mars ... sending it minutely spiraling ever closer to a distant, castastrophic impact! THAT "flexing/orbital energy-exchange process" -- not magically-aligned impact crater strings -- is what is, simultaneously, creating the stunning rectilinear surface pattern of "criss-crossing straight lines" on Phobos' front (the side just photographed by Mars Express ...), while also continuing to widen these internal fissures in the surface ... easily seen now stretching all across the "top," "bottom" and "sides" .... She's literally "coming apart" (below).
Revealing the stunning, internal architectural "mega-pattern" that IS Phobos (note the repeating "squares and rectangles" at the "north pole" of this image - top - above); that the Mars Express cameras (and other internal measurements ...) were finally able to capture just last month .... For ESA's planned "surprise." But, that wasn't the only thing that Phobos' increasing tidal interactions were revealing .... In describing the internal geometric structure of this "moon" as revealed by MARSIS, our European ESA contact repeatedly emphasized that "several of these interior Phobos compartments also appear to still be holding some kind of atmosphere ...." Our source repeated this several times ... raising all kinds of fascinating questions regarding "how" the radar could, in fact, determine this -- that some of the vast "rooms" inside Phobos (remember "from a quarter to half-a-mile in diameter ...") were STILL "maintaining an internal pressure" .... This almost unbelievable news [which immediately triggered all kinds of mental images ... including, Phobos as a kind of "suspended animation ark" (who ... or what ... would we find INSIDE when we "got in there" ... waiting ... for us to come and "wake them up!?")] raised some truly major implications .... The temptation to spin countless such "Phobos waking up scenarios ..." -- each more unbelievable than the last-- Was irresistable. In turn, our ESA source was quite surprised (though gratified ...) to belatedly learn about the "old news" -- which definitely went along with this new radar discovery: that, the first Soviet Phobos-2 mission -- in 1989 -- had, in fact, detected--
Mars' two tiny "moons" were -- demonstrably -- slowly leaking some kind of internal atmosphere into space ... an atmosphere whose side-effects were unquestionably showing up on a variety of the Soviet spacecraft instruments (below)!
This kind of "outgassing" (and the amount being detected ...) could NOT be "geological" ... i.e. sustained for any "billion-year" time frames ... certainly not since the formation of the solar system; the implications of some kind of current "active degassing of tiny Phobos," in fact, supported the almost inconceivable idea that not only was Phobos artificial, but-- There had been some kind of recent change to Phobos "space enviornment" ... perhaps, even in its location in the solar system. Which had resulted in its interior temperature being raised ... thus causing the vaporization of its "previously frozen, habitable atmosphere" into space .... Such a major environmental change is impossible to account for via any "natural origins for Phobos" ... but is totally in keeping with Shklovsky's initial speculations -- re a more "recent" origin ... than "geologial" ... for Mars' two extraordinary "moons!" Or, our own variation on Shklovsky's initial observation-- That Phobos and Deimos have, in fact, recently "been moved" ... from a previous, much colder region of the solar system ....
* * *
So many data points ... so many speculations .... Which brings us back to what must politically happen -- next! The Russian Phobos-Grunt Mission now has suddenly, irrevocably, been changed (or, will have been -- by the time this news gets out): from, "find and bring back dirt from Phobos" (the literal Russian translation of the word "grunt") ... to ... "find and bring back the first "publicly-acknowledged, ancient ET solar system artifacts from Phobos (!) ... all in 2012!"--
Bring them back from "an ancient solar system relic -- Phobos" ... from "an extraordinarly distant, pre-human, apparently solar-system-wide ancient high-tech civilization ...." One that could ultimately turn out to be-- In this light, this long-planned Russian Phobos Sample Return Mission takes on a totally new meaning-- As potentially -- "the single most important scientific mission in the history of Humans ... certainly, in the just-passed half-century of modern solar system exploration ...." For, "Phobos-Grunt" is the only current means for early reconnaisance of the stunning "potentialities of Phobos" -- suddenly, as an astronomical body, the most accessible member of "an entirely new class of solar system object"-- An ancient, ET spaceship! And Keeper ... if any of this was even half-way correct ... of "an amazing, almost unimaginable treasure-trove of radical new science ... "magical" technologies ... and biological breakthroughs ..." that, all because of Mars Express' now-established confirmation that "Phobos IS significantly hollow ... and therefore, likely artificial"-- Awaits all Humanity ... inside Phobos.
A special "Phobos" Artifacts Retrieval Mission needs to be created now ... by modifying the technology planned for "Phobos-Grunt." Turning it into a robotic mission specifically tasked with bringing back our first actual fragments of "an extraterrestrially-advanced ... technology!" Such priceless returned samples would, of course, have to be quarantined (for a while, anyway ...) at the International Space Station (ISS) -- orbiting ~220 miles above the Earth. In parallel with technical alteration of the planned "Phobos-Grunt Mission," ISS could easily be equipped with the proper lab facilities to analyze such "ET technological gold" when it came back to Earth ... in perfect (and crucial) isolation in orbit -- thus, insuring that Earth remains secure from any problems of "back-contamination." Which, of course -- after this initial unmanned sample-return mission to Phobos -- brings us to the critical role for the astronauts and cosmonauts in this "new space Reality." For, after Phobos-Grunt -- and the analytical results from whatever ET technology this Russian mission can bring back -- it is clear that "human crews" are going to become critically important in "opening up" Phobos .... To say nothing regarding all the other "ancient stuff" waiting in the solar system ... for human exploration .... The entire US and Russian astronaut and cosmonaut corps (to say nothing of the Japanese ... Chinese ... Italian ... Germans, etc., etc.) will become, overnight, the "first human ambassadors to a 15-mile-long ET spaceship circling Mars" ... a ship containing over ~2000 cubic MILES of "secrets" .... Suddenly, it will be "Captain Kirk" ... for real!
* * *
Speaking of spaceship captains .... One of the first astronauts to walk on the Moon -- Freemason Buzz Aldrin -- seems to have had a head-start on almost everybody else on this crucial "Phobos business"; for some reason, Buzz has been trying "artfully" -- for months -- to get the rest of us to pay attention to this tiny place called "Phobos." Since last July -- since the 40th Anniversary of Apollo 11 ... When he suddenly began saying, repeatedly-- "The place to REALLY go is Phobos ... because it's cool ...!"
Aldrin ....
Who stunned the self-proclaimed "inside crowd" of Washington space experts one Sunday morning, by blurting out on C-Span-- "There's also a Monolith on Phobos ... people will ask 'who built it?' etc., etc. ...." Well, this (below) is the "mysterious monolith" that Aldrin has been referring to so frequently of late ... a genuinely puzzling, obviously geometric "tower" -- approximately half the Washington Monument high (~250 feet) -- sticking out of the ground on the Mars-facing side of Phobos (below) .... A tower whose "top" looks awfully flat and "equilateral" ... and is at approximately 19.5 N, in the recently-established Phobos coordinate system ....
The "Phobos Monolith" was initially discovered by independent research colleague, Efrain Palermo in 1998. Palermo also had a bit of help from another independent rearcher, Lan Fleming -- as they both attempted to analyze the curious "artifact" captured on a Mars Surveyor telescopic image of the side of Phobos visible from Mars .... For obvious reasons, they just started calling it "the Monolith" .... The name stuck. So, the deliberate "reintroduction" of the entire, highly controversial subject of "the Monolith" (with ALL its implications ...) into the current conversation around "should we go to Mars?" -- and, just before a stunning series of close-up ESA images proves that Phobos IS an "artificial planetoid" -- was definitely "trying to tell us something" Like ... ah ... maybe the Monolith was how one "gets inside" ...?
But Buzz was not alone in promoting the idea that "the quickest way to get humans to Mars ... is to go first to Phobos ...."; that idea was originally proposed back during the Eisenhower Administration ... by one of Ike's own science advisors, Dr. S. Fred Singer. Then, just when you thought it was safe to go back on the dance floor ... a few days ago, Dr. Aldrin brings "Phobos" up ... again-- This time -- during his FOX network competition on "Dancing with the Stars!" During one of the breaks in the dancing competition, Buzz deftly slid from talking about the "cha-cha-cha ..." directly into "Phobos" (of all things!) -- telling a story "regarding the 'cool space photographs' -- including Phobos -- I've been showing my dance partner in rehearsal ...." It's almost as if Buzz is trying to warn us about "what's rapidly coming" ... vis a vis "the White House, and Obama's imminent Summit on Space" ... but has been prevented from telling us the whole truth-- The REAL reasons why "Phobos has suddenly become 'so cool ..." That, it's because Phobos has now been confirmed to be ... a SHIP! And, all of us -- every spacefaring nation on Earth -- are about to go and "pay her a visit" ... really soon! I mean, what else could Aldrin have been referring to -- in the context of all we have been able to reveal here, vis a vis the real scientific nature of Phobos ... when he also emphatically said during his "Dancing with the Stars" appearance-- "The moon Phobos on Mars [sic] ... is very, very crucial to our future ...." Say, what ..!!? In fact, is Aldrin trying to alert us to what President Medvedev was REALLY referring to the other day ... when he so surprisingly and extraordinarily stated, in public--
What will be Obama's response to Medvedev's sweeping "premptive-declaration" ... made just days before Obama's own "domestic Space Summit" at Cape Canaveral, in Florida? Medvdev, seizing the global upperhand, went on dramatically--
Code? And, what could that "uniting positive factor" be ...? Medvedev is almost giving it away ... on the heels of signing the latest treaty in the recent START nuclear arms reduction talks ... and in the literal midst of participating in the Nuclear Proliferation Summit, being hosted by President Obama himself in Washington, DC -- just days before his much anticipated "Space Summit" in Florida .... So, what is Medvedev's "message?" Maybe that "something's" about to occur in space ... something "so Big ... that it is going to require 'an International Summit, at the heads of governments level' ...." Exactly the type of move you'd leak ... if you wanted to seize control of "the rate and direction of the imminent Disclosure Plan" .... The alternative hypothesis is that-- All of this is occuring ... simultaneously ..."just by accident." Yeah, right .... So, is Aldrin correct? Is all this "signaling," on his part, an effort to alert "the alertable" ... that "something BIG" IS coming -- something involving "Phobos" ... and "a Monolith? And, that "big something" is the same "something" that now has the President of Russia suddenly expressing his personal concern that--
And what, at Medvedev's "summit," will they be talking about ...? Why, the obvious developing plans for "Russians and Americans ... together -- to jointly explore inside Phobos -- looking (as I have said so many times before) for-- "The libraries!" "Humans on Phobos" is how Buzz said it on C-span -- "... boldly going where no humans have been before ..." (now, where do you suppose he picked up that particular expression ...?). Late information suggests that Aldrin will also now be playing a major behind-the-scenes role in the upcoming Presidential Space Summit -- the one, clearly-identified astronaut with his eyes clearly set on the real prize-- An artificial Phobos. This "amazingly revealing" Phobos (below)--
* * *
In the coming days, as the "Phobos revelations" we have been able to publish here continue to sink in (and, from the feedback we've been getting, this is definitely taking place at ALL levels of the NASA/ESA/White House consortium that is reading what is posted here ...), there will be a rising demand for ESA to publicly address these issues ... and publish more confirming or disconfirming evidence. The color-coded, three-D interior MARSIS radar images of Phobos are "first on the list" of the new data which the general public and worldwide scientific community must now demand ... so as to check those still unpublished radar maging details against the previously-posted "MARSIS Phobos graph" (below) ....
And, contrary to certain ESA excuses ("it takes weeks to prepare such color-coded, 3-D images from the 2-D radar plots ...")-- This is a deliberate stall-- Masking the fact that our own ESA "source" readily admitted several nights ago to seeing "the interior rooms and walls" of Phobos ... by looking directly at the already computer-created 3-D radar images ... on his office computer screen! In fact, any MARSIS 3-D "catscan" image presentations of "the interior of Phobos" should look something like this (below)--
The MARSIS and SHARAD radar presentations here (above) depict, in three descending panels, a typical 3-D radar plot. The ground track of the Mars Express and MRO spacecraft over the Martian south pole is depicted in the top (1) panel .... The two 3-D radar images below it, precisely matched to scale ... represent (2) the lower resolution MARSIS data, from "pinging" the surface of Mars as Mars Express flys over, and (3) the much higher-resolution SHARAD radar imaging data created from the higher-frequency radar system carried on a similar orbiting Mars platform, NASA's Mars Reconniassance Orbiter (MRO). MARSIS Phobos 3-D images like these should have been produced and released -- simultaneously -- with the single frequency MARSIS radar graph that ESA published on its website earlier. If that 3-D Phobos data were released -- based on preliminary Enterprise research into what type of "spaceship" Phobos might have been when it was "new" -- we would expect to see outlines of this "ship" in those other images ... revealing its underlying structural geometry-- For comparison with other NASA and ESA images ... of potentially similar craft ... located elsewhere in the solar system. Based on the Mars Express visual imagery alone (as opposed to the still unpublished radar images), we can make some pretty good comparisons between how Phobos looks now -- as an entirely new "class" of ancient solar system object -- and some other equally "peculiar objects" that NASA and ESA spacecraft have photographed close-up across the solar system .... And the best match we've found to date-- 2867 Steins. "Steins" is another "asteroid-like ... small solar system object," that another ESA Mission -- Rosetta -- flew past, in the Fall of 2008; Steins also turned out to be a ship ... a 3-mile-wide, ancient spaceship orbiting the sun ... and even more remarkably, a ship molded exactly like a classic diamond (below - left)!
A giant spacecraft shaped, ultimately ... like a truncated "double tetrahedron!" The striking (if heavily eroded) resemblance -- between Steins and Phobos now (below) -- is compelling ....
Phobos is, also-- An ancient "tetrahedral spaceship!" In fact, it seems to have suffered considerably more damage than Steins ... perhaps another clue as to its real "point of origin," during the ancient "solar-system-wide cataclysm" that Joseph Farrell and I have been investigating for some time ..... The features marked with the numbered red arrows (below) highlight the three main regions of identity -- between the Rosetta images of Steins ... and Mars Express' image of Phobos:
There can be no reasonable doubt: Steins and Phobos were designed by the same "ancient spaceship designer" ... who made full use of the versatile and multi-faceted properties of the "tetrahedral" frame ... in this case, on two very different scales. It is educational to look back now -- after the current discovery of the true, underlying tetrahedral nature of Phobos -- and consider what I wrote, almost two years ago ... concerning the clearly artificial nature then of "2867 Steins" ....
And another one of them ... now we know ... is Phobos!
Surprisingly, this idea of "ancient, giant tetrahedral spacecraft ... prowling the spaceways of the solar system ..." is also not new; as can be seen (below), it even made it to the cover of one of the key magazines in the so-called "Golden Age"... raising all kinds of interesting questions, regarding-- Who ... "remembered" what ... and when?
Then, there is the stunningly prophetic work (again!) of my old friend, Arthur C. Clarke. In light of these confirmations -- that Phobos represents the battered remnants of another, ancient tetrahedral spacecraft -- once again, one can only wonder about Arthur's "sources' ... for 2001 (below)--
For, one of the early artists' concepts at MGM for "the Monolith" in 2001 -- modeled on Arthur's own description of the "ET beacon" in "The Sentinal" -- turned out to be another giant tetrahedron (above) .... Which, of course, then was echoed by the football field-sized version that suddenly appeared ... directly over Moscow's Red Square ... just last December (below)--
One might begin to suspect a remarkable "tetrahedral pattern" here ... between "ancient tetrahedrally-shaped city-sized spacecraft" ... orbiting Mars as "false moons" ... to modern "replications" of this same form in print and film (under the guise of being merely "science fiction") .... And then, the startlingly current appartitions of this identical geometry-- The Moscow Pyramid. Hanging for an entire day and night -- in its best "Independence Day-type" immitation -- directly over one of the most powerful cities on the planet .... A very contemporary "Tetrahedral Message" .... Which, in turn, is echoed in another of Clarke's most famous works-- "Rendezvous with Rama."
Another epic story ... set inside another hollow world ... where things also "come in [tetrahedral] threes" ....
What will we actually find inside "the hollow world of Phobos" ... will probably make even Arthur's staggering imagination pale .... I mean -- this is the stuff of pure 1950's science fiction-- Come-to-life!! " ...white-suited astronauts from Earth ... exploring firsthand the secrets of 'a ~15-mile-long, ancient alien spaceship' ...!" parked right next door in the same solar system .... Exploring it-- On LIVE global television!
Shades of Bradbury and Lowell ....
* * *
In a sense, we've all been here before -- as described in a new book reviewed recently by the New York Times-- “Another Science Fiction: Advertising the Space Race 1957-1962.” Written by Megan Prelinger, this remarkable volume has been aptly described by the Times as "... Mad Men meets Flash Gorden ...."
Documented by Mrs. Prelinger's meticulous research, the business advertising response to the First Space Age -- the one that economically and technologically gave us "the latter half of the 20th Century" -- was one of capitolizing on "the New Frontier" ... and investing some of those federal NASA dollars in further in-house product R&D ... eventually resulting in an economy ~30 times larger in 2010 (51 years later) ... than in 1961 -- when Kennedy first proposed Apollo. With this as documented history, try to imagine the economic impact of "definitive, documented, official proof" that "there once existed a vast, incredibly advanced, solar system-wide ET civilization ...." And -- "one of its surviving ships is actually what we used to think of as a 'moon' ... a moon of Mars." The explosion of scientific, technological and cultural advances that investigating a surviving ~15-mile-wide artifact from a truly advanced, ancient ET civilization will, without question, produce ... will exceed any -- by factors of thousands -- previous "great leaps forward" in technology or society ... including, the "phenomenonally inventive period" for (soon-to-become Nazi) Germany -- from ~1929 to 1945. And, a LOT of this extraordinary new progress will be fueled not by NASA ... but by private space development corporations -- eager to "mine" the vast potential of the "ET science and technology" that the human explorers will inevitably find ... and bring back to Earth for back engineering ... if they can get to Mars ..... But NASA must lead "the first wave" -- in both the development of the booster technologies required to send human explorers to Mars, as well as development of the engineering to keep them alive once they're there ... inside Phobos -- to say nothing of the organizational skills required to successfully complete such a massive, multi-planet, multi-disciplinary undertaking. But, because we have already invested half a century into developing, it turns out, the precise technologies to successfully reach Phobos before anyone else ... certain countries on Earth are about to become "almost incomprehensibly richer ...."
* * *
In a sense, it will become as if the almost five decades -- between 1968, time of the first human trip around the Moon, of Apollo 8 -- and 2010, when the world is finally shown scientific proof that it is NOT alone -- never existed .... The "economic/technological 21st Century revolution" that Kennedy and James Webb, his second NASA Administrator, carefully engineered across the South -- will now accelerate across the Nation to a fever pitch, as a result of any such announcement ... as more and more folks realize what "gaining access to genuine extraterrestrial technology" will do for the United States economy ... even in the short term ... if not for them personally. The immediate economic advantages, if Obama chooses such a "way forward" for NASA ... is a well-known (and well-researched) calculation; some economists conservatively estimate that for projections running "less than a generation," the diffuse, amplified R&D investment gain from monies spent through NASA, is "between 8 and 20 to 1." Longer, and the "NASA R&D multiplier effect" becomes essentially untrackable ... because the return grows too large (and becomes too intertwined in the economy as a whole) to be accurately isolated and measured .... But, even at 20-to-1 .... For every billion dollars spent in creating a human mission ala "Apollo" ... to Phobos ... twenty billion dollars would come back to the American economy ... within a generation. The modern price of sending a human crew to Phobos would be roughly equivalent to what Apollo was in 1969, adjusted for inflation -- about 200 billion dollars in today's currency; so, in 20 years, that investment would (conservatively) net the United States' domestic national product $4 trillion extra dollars ... that it would have otherwise not accrued. And, that is specifically NOT counting the "fair market value" for whatever "magical" science, technology and other advances are waiting inside Phobos .... How can one peoperly evaluate their social and economic impact ... or, the value to society of even a partial "back engineering" and "commercialization" of ET technology ...? But even if these "value-added benefits' are excluded, the "normal" R&D investment in new technologies required to safely send human crews to orbit Mars ... and then rendezvous with Phobos ... are extraordinary; no other "government expenditures" offer anything like this "high-leverage, technologically proven return of ~20-to-1" .... Only NASA. Which, I hope, is one of the reasons that the President seems to have chosen "tax day" -- April 15th -- to HOLD this unique Presidential Summit on the future of NASA and American human space efforts; to emphasize "that NASA is unique" ... in that monies invested in the future via NASA, have made us all demonstrably richer over the last half-century ..... The other night on "Coast," when I was asked about "getting to Phobos," I said that "getting to and from Phobos is easier than going to and from the surface of our own Moon ..." I then promised the proof behind that statement. Here is is .... Countless space studies, over five decades -- carried out both by NASA and its major aerospace contractors (companies like Boeing and Grumman and Lockheed ...) -- have demonstrated that the rocket booster development requirements (and thus major funding) for a robotic (or human) mission to and from Phobos and Deimos -- the two tiny moons of Mars -- are significantly less than for ANY OTHER planetary destinations in the solar system ....
This is only one of many such recent references ... evidencing a serious resurgance of interest in visiting Phobos first by current space planners -- as part of a longer-range plan to ultimately send humans to the surface of Mars itself. Now, with the discovery that Phobos is a priceless in-space relic in its own right -- an actual ship (or what is left of it ...) "left over" from an obviously "extremely advanced ET civilization epoch in the ancient solar system ..." -- all discussion about "early technological accessibility" to Phobos-- Becomes serendipitously crucial. Because, the "cold equations" of simple celestial mechanics will allow Apollo-class rocket technology ... or an equivalent shuttle-derived "heavy lift" technology (such as that outlined in the DIRECT 3 SDV Proposal), to safely take astronauts to an early rendezvous with Phobos ... thus allowing personal human and robotic explorations inside .... All within less than ten years-- Echoing Kennedy's ringing timetable for Apollo ... but with an infinitely larger payoff at the end this time--
An extraordinary civilization that -- even across the mists of solar system eons -- in a thousand ways, still has the power to reach out ... and transform Earth's "primitive echoes" of that ancient, mythic time ... in a 21st Century Renaissance that will without doubt revolutionize the 22nd Century solar system ....
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So, what will be President Barack Obama's public decision regarding all of this -- a huge confirmed artifact ...orbiting Mars -- in his upcoming "Space Summit," this Thursday afternoon, April 15, 2010? Will he "make it all official" -- in the best John F. Kennedy tradition? Will he give us -- in the best Star Trek tradition -- a limitless 22nd Century ... a 23rd?
By dramatically announcing -- with a live, international Shuttle/Station-crew in orbit overhead -- that "the NEW Destination for the American Space Program ... and for all of Humanity with it-- Is Phobos!" The astonishing, "newly-discovered" spaceship moon of Mars .... And that, finding out "what this stunning discovery means to every living person currently on Earth" ... will demand the best from every segment of society ... and, in the process, the literal creation of "a New Frontier of Hope."
It wouldn't be the first time that Star Trek had literally changed history .... Stay tuned.
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